azzurro

Classic surf wag in punch yellow

Double 'coon spot

Slower progress this week, 

My excuses are a nightmare window motor and regulator swap in the daily

- complete with incorrect parts supplied, correct parts supplied that dont quite fit (never sort by cheapest!) and need swapping from the old bits, blood and much swearing

And a stereo upgrade in a buddys new (to him) Nissan VanPa Beige Anonymity edition. 

New bearing and oil seals showed up, so regreased the passenger side, and managed to dint the seal on the new one, so thats just great.

Still will be 100% better than the old drivers side bearing that had to be destructively removed and fell apart .

yep, that would not have sounded good, and pretty sure it had been driven like that for a while - there were other wear on the other bits and the old seal on this side was noticeably ovalled.

Dug out the bin of brake lines - 125/124/lada stuff that i have is pretty close to the 1100 stuff  but had to swap the ferrules and make double flares for the ends that go into the brass distribution block that mounts on the diff

Picked up this bad boy for pretty much nothing ages ago, an Oldforge, 7203, and proper Made in USA , and first time using it and i managed to squeeze out a perfect double flare.

USA, A-OK! 

Diffs ready to go back under, I wire wheeled and degreased the sections where the diffs going to go, no new surprises and will come up mint with a sand blast, but for now Im gonna put some rust converter to just seal and pause it for now (and its mostly see through apart from where it goes black) and just concentrate on tidying the brackets that things get bolted to, so i can bolt cleaned up and painted things to cleaned and painted things.

Finally found a sample that's close enough to use for a colour match. PPG Char Grey which is a bronwy/greeny grey.

With the differential out time for a dismantle and clean up

Axles removed, can you guess which side came out easy and which side was a real bastard?

However, this is the rusty side after a bit of a soak in some kero. 

it still had a gritty feeling even after being regreased probably pits in the bearing rollers from sitting in rusty grease, i hummed and hawed because the bearings are over $100 each and its not really mission critical, but ive decided Ill replace this rusty bearing while ive got it out, and because pulling the brakes and stuff off is such a pain in the dick on the van and im thinking of future me  - however, the other side feels much nicer so it can stay. 

For reference, this is a RIV 9632 which is 35x72x27, which cross references to a 3207 bearing.

Outer axle seals are 48x62x10, but thats an uncommon size so ive ordered 2x 48x62x8, as a bonus that puts the seal on a different part of the shaft, which is part of the hub

Diff head off and cleaned up and repainted.

Marked the pinion nut and pinion with a punch, installed the new seal (38x70x10/13) Another odd one, but is common across the 1100-1500-2300 family so had one already

Other than dirty oil the inside was really good, hardly any wear nothing busted or chipped, and there anything i wouldn't have expected on the magnet.

Diff is 43/7 ratio or 1:6.14 which is i guess how they managed to have the original 38hp 1100cc powered vans, a '1 ton' load rating!

The 0-60ft times will be good, hah!

Brake backing plates after a soak in teh parts cleaner and a quick sand blast

Evaporust

Paint

Just evaporust on the patented (bevettato) 'AXIBLOCK' by RIV - magic stuff.

Dug some likely candidates for replacing the rear shocks out of the stash.

Ive already swapped the lower eye rubbers and bushes over, but did need to swap the upper pins for the eyes off the old ones.

And a nice box of clean, replaced or repaired, repainted and thread chased bits to go back on

 

OLD GROSSNESS

 

NEW HOTNESS

 

 

 

I did a quick experiment, rust converter and use up some not quite right coloured spray can just to see if some colour made it look better, and yep, sure does! 

I want to figure out a way to knock the surface rust/hard dirt/dry grease back without taking off the factory texture coating

i have a few attachments on the grinder to try, but not looking forward to the days underneath that will be needed to do even a half ass job tbh

 

Sand blasting is probably the way, but i dont really want to have it done in the driveway (can this even happen?), and cant really move it with everything off out of the way.

Any idea on cost or not to dos from those that have undeside sandblasting done before?

With the Ute sorted, its back outside and the cars are shuffled back inside.

Back to the Van.

Dropped the rear axle for a cleaning up before refurbishing the brakes/new lines etc.

This is the underside of the van - i know it looks like shit, but it's mostly flaky underseal/paint, dirt, 50 yo dry grease and surface rust.

All the rails are solid and unbent, the floor is a bit saggy but thats from being loaded, not rust. Ill try popping that up a bit with a bit of wood on the jack under the thin cross members.

I think ill clean up and brush repaint in the factory grey mainly around all the mounting points and areas that will be hard to access with the diff back in the way so it doesn't look too restored/fixed before i sort out a repair cert, and the rest ill give a tickle with the wire bush while the diff out and just brunox or something to hold it steady.

Diff oil was actually not too bad, and given the amount of oil on the outside, there was a surprising amount still on the inside. 

Ill replace the diff pinion and outer axle oil seals too once i get them off and note the specs to order them from the bearing place.

Only one broken fastener, which was one of the captive nuts for the sway bar mount so ill need to cut the floor to weld that back in.

Always very impressed with the quality of Fiats fasteners, they very are rarely the issue irrespective of the state of the crap they hold together.

These have an axle/hub setup like a beetle or kombi with the drum and hub as one unit, held onto the splined axle shaft with a big fuggentight castellated nut.

Pass side rear brakes where already disassembled when i got the van, which requires removal of the hub and drum, and that hub slid off nicely. I suspect a leaky axle seal was probably the cause of the original brake issue but as a bonus it kept the spines well lubed on that side!

The driver side on the other hand was pretty dang tight. The spline and hub rusted together. The man in the book has a special tool but i dont, so cobbled this up. 

It was stuck on pretty good! 

But eventually it popped off.

Reference photos for drum reassembly below also show everything inside the drum is present and correct, which is as expected as the handbrake worked pretty good before,  interestingly also has fairly low wear.

Crusty spline will need some cleanup but a blast with brake cleaner already made a big difference. Ill probably replace the wheel bearing on this side while im in there

4x150 steel hub with integrated bearing, aluminium with steel lined drum.

Brake surfaces are like new, no appreciable wear or scoring, the pass side is slightly worse, but still very good.

Got pretty frosty the other day. 

Bonus 125 in shot

Some more bits turned up, cap and stat for the new radiator and core plugs for the block.

so I gently smashed them in with a BFH and a socket. Love the look of fresh new plugs in a freshly painted block.

Stole the alternator mount back off the van engine and cleaned that up.

Also had a test with my crate of alternators while its easy to access and, looks like a rwd twincam alternator will bolt up easily if needed.

Popped the cleaned, rebushed and painted generator on for now.

Pop

Cant do too much more till i get the head back from the engine reconditioners with new valve seats and guides, and since i havnt taken it too them, i may be a while.

 

Have picked up the reconditioned radiator tho, very happy with Radiator Services in South Dunedin. Good communication, job done well by people who know what theyre doing, for a reasonable price. They even added a fan temp bung (factory fan is constant - ill upgrade to a triggered system) for free as they rang me to collected it earlier than they said it would be ready and id only just noticed i forgot to ask them about it. 

Ended up with a cut down core from a second hand Nissan Patrol radiator, because getting a new core in the size and spec needed (3 row) was crazy expensive. This certainly wasn't cheap, but was a lot less expensive, and vans always need a solid cooling system.

Triple spot!

Super nice looking and sounding v8 falcon ute. 

Ol mate being visited has a couple nice mk1 escorts (a mexico and a van) too

I have quite a few fucks to give, but I would just rather do almost anything else but prepping for paint.

I think its the visible progress to time ratio - i have a series of steps in my head for a given task and i think i tend to see them equally (they all get one line on the list?)  and because this one step just takes flippin aaaages it grinds my gears.

So anyway, got to the point where the diminishing returns of sanding yet another coat of filler met my level of fucks.

 

Masked up. Basically only repainting the sill area, as the paint above the body line is mostly original but a bit patchy, and still has the pink stripes so i was hoping to sort of fade it in and cover up some of the worst bits from the bottom up. The front and rear lower bits have been painted before.

I was worried the rattle can primer i used might react with the gun paint. Not enough to sand it off tho, hah.

Primered

And de masked 

(i may hate sanding, but goddam i love peeling of masking!) 

Nioce

The paint is a few years old and while i stirred it pretty good i think it was a bit thick and should have put extra thinners in it as it wasnt spraying very well at all.

I went over it with some thinners at the end which smoothed it out a lot in most places except here.

I also put a texture line to match the factory 'tide mark' on the sills using primer with a very low pressure just sort of spitting bumps on it.

Windscreen ready to go back in

And done, just need to install the filler strip and this beastie can go back outside and go back to 'work' (ie going to the dump once a month or so) .

Fired up first pop too.